Free Speech on College Campuses

Kenzie Winkler
Due: May 16th 2011
WR 122/ Wilde
Final Essay #2
Importance of ‘Free Speech’College is a time when most individuals are experiencing major changes and begin to explore new perspectives. The transition in becoming more independent, creating new insights and peer influence are key factors in changing the perspective of an individual. Students are faced with new ideas from their professors, family and fellow peers. Through that acquired knowledge many students decide that they either agree or disagree with the perspectives that they are taught. Allowing the right of ‘Free Speech’ on public college campuses has become an important issue that many public colleges are starting to address. In college students are capable of informing their peers about issues that are important and controversial. It is important that students are able to maintain this right so they can and inform the student body to promote positive change. Free speech should be allowed on public college campuses because it liberates students to actively engage in controversial issues. ‘Free Speech’ is necessary on college campuses because it allows students to determine their own beliefs and promote positive change. ‘Free speech’ can be interpreted as, “The ability for students to explore controversial topics and express popular opinions without fear or reprisal” (Schmidt 1). College is an important transition in life because it is an age where students are forced to make their own independent decisions. Students are leaving home for the first time and explore new ideas and establishing their own opinion on current issues that surround them. ‘Free Speech’ is essential because it provides awareness to college campuses and it a proactive way of educating students outside of the classroom. A perfect example of this took place on the campus of University of Oregon, it was a debate whether or not the Pacifica Forum should be allowed to hold meetings in University of Oregon’s classrooms...

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

...Perspectives on Free-Speech Zones on CollegeCampuses
Naturally, many negative connotations come along with the term “free-speech zone.” The wording alone automatically insinuates that freespeech should not be allowed everywhere, which is hardly the true intention of the idea. Sometimes the right of freespeech is taken advantage of; such as in certain rallies and protests, where disruptive noise, violence, and destruction often occurs. Universities hold a responsibility to their students of providing a reasonably safe and undisruptive environment to learn and excel in. Universities are not creating “free-speech zones” to limit freespeech, but rather to maintain a secure atmosphere that is conducive to concentration and higher learning.
Universities should be able to maintain a certain level of safety on campus in whatever way they choose. “The University reserves the right to relocate or cancel the activity due to disruption from excessive noise levels, traffic entanglement, or if the safety of individuals is in question” (West Virginia University’s Student Handbook 91). They are not undermining the right of freespeech that we as Americans legally hold, but are creating an appropriate means for demonstrators to voice their opinions without...

...Student
Prof.
English 1020
Should Colleges Be Limited to Speech?
In “The Freedom to Offend,” Ian Buruma explains how we have the right to speak freely and how we can have the freedom to offend our own being. America is the land of the free and we can say what we want because of the First Amendment. Limiting speech could become an issue on collegecampuses because some students inevitably choose to follow the hate speech codes and some would choose to disobey the hate speech codes. I am focusing on how campuses are allowing policies to be put into place that limits students on what they can say as well as how hate speech affects students. Limiting speech and hate speech on campuses goes against the First Amendment, it goes against student rights, the use of censorship violates the First Amendment, and limiting speech affects our diverse collegecampuses more frequently.
The First Amendment provides guidelines on how America should work. The First Amendment states that, “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…” (Greenup 606). One of the main reasons that the United States of America was founded was for the right to speak freely. America is unique because of this freedom. It seems that this is no longer...

...﻿
FreeCollege for All
Amber Bennie
comm215
January 12, 2015
University of Phoenix
FreeCollege for All
Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to go to college for free? President Obama is proposing a plan for two free years of community college for anyone and everyone. This plan quite possibly could pave the way for a more fruitful and educated future in America for many reasons. Not everyone agrees with this idea, but hopefully Congress does. Once determined how this project will be funded, Americans should be excited to have such a program in action. It will affect more than just people’s education levels.
"Community college should be free for those willing to work for it because, in America, a quality education should not be a privilege that is reserved for a few," said President Obama in a speech he gave at a state community college according to Florida times union (2015). Other countries like in Europe and Germany already offer freecollege, yet we are the land of the free and deprive the citizens of an education because of their financial situations. We offer grants that take so much paperwork effort and stress that some, especially the less educated, have a hard time completing. We offer student loans that have so much interest that it leaves the student...

...At the school, teachers took sides, and because she was miles away from her parents and other means of support the young student felt ostracized. She felt like she had come to the land of the free and when she decided to speak her mind, she was shot down. (Daszkiewicz, personal communication, February 15, 2012) Karen Miner, the teacher, also felt her own freedoms had been brought under fire, and although she had been supported by her school and local school board, she certainly was not promoting Nazi ideology. (Associated Press 1996)
What the student and the teacher had experienced here was a classic clash over when and if our freedom of speech should be censored. In either position; it is hard to know how we should respond. This was a balancing act with the teacher on one side representing the government, her students, and herself and the student on the other representing the individual. Both sides would probably describe their own freedom of expression to be the one that was threatened. And both have a reasonable claim to have their rights being protected.
In the United States of America, the right to freedom of speech has been held as one of this country’s highest values, as nationally recognized by the Constitution of the United States of America. Censorship of speech is a controversial subject matter, and will probably always be debated in the U.S. as long as this country exists. Balancing...

...The Constitution of the United States states in its First Amendment that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances" (Funk & Wagnalls 162). This Amendment guarantees each person of freespeech. Does this mean that a person can stand in the middle of the street and yell anything he wants? No, society, even though it cherishes freedom of speech, does give this freedom certain restrictions.
Why does society find it necessary to restrict freedom of speech? Does this ensure a more controlled society? Let us imagine a society that has no restrictions of speech. For example, anyone can publish a false story of another person, just for revenge perhaps, and the offended person would not be able to defend himself because there is no restriction of speech. A neighbor in a residential area decides to use a loud microphone to announce his beliefs in the middle of the night, and wakes everybody up. Because that person has every right to speak, nobody can do anything. Even though this is "freedom of speech" it is not allowed in a civilized society.
Freespeech is a very controversial issue...

...Freespeech is one of the most controversial and confusing of the amendments. Throw it into a college campus setting and it’s an extremely complex matter, especially when “Hate Speech” is involved. Many people have different views and definitions on what hate speech in tales, for instance in “Hate Speech on Campus”, Joseph S. Tuman, defines it as “Written or spoken words directed towards a particular group (typically although not exclusively a minority group) with the purpose or effect of verbally harassing and harming them” (413). A personal interpretation of hate speech is speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. With this being said, hate speech is a form of freespeech. By removing, or writing codes against hate speech on collegecampuses would be injustice, because it goes against our First Amendment, censorship, and hate speech codes are ineffective. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects speech no matter how offensive it’s content. The First Amendment states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof: or abridging the freedom of speech, or...

...No one can deny that freedom of speech is one of the most basic rights in democracies both in the United States and abroad. Unlimited freedom of speech however, is an unrealistic expectation for many reasons. The most pressing one being a violent reaction to hate speech. We must be able to seek a balance between freedom of expression and censorship of religious and racial hatred. Hate speech is a type of speech that incites other people to hate a certain group in society defined by common characteristics usually either race, gender, religion. It usually also incites to commit violence and discrimination based on hatred. This is the type of speech that I think has the most basis for restriction because of it’s tendency to incite violence because of its outrageous and usually untrue claims about a group of people as a whole.
By allowing unlimited freespeech we run the risk of creating harm for individuals as was the case in the Keane piece we read for today. Keane details an event in 2006 where a Danish newspaper published blatantly offensive cartoons depicting the muslim prophet Muhammed with a bomb shown as a turban. A year later a far leaning liberal party in Denmark ran on the platform of another cartoon of Muhammed on the body of a dog with the slogan “Freedom of Speech is Danish, censorship is not.” The cartoon was not necessary other than...

...FreeSpeech vs. Harmful Hate Speech
Freedom of speech is instilled at the beginning of the Bill of Rights and it allows citizens of the United States to express their opinions without being afraid of what might happen to them, much like in other countries. Many times people are directly or indirectly harmed by others’ actions that are considered a right under the freedom of speech clause. Though, some people worry that if we do not allow for complete freedom of speech, it is hard to figure out what the limits are. So how can we distinguish between what is covered under our freedom of speech right and what is not if there are no limits? Freedom of speech is a constitutional right given to every citizen, entitling them to voice their opinion however they see fit. However, in order to be protected in schools and businesses, many boundaries have been placed on freespeech in order to regulate harmful hate speech. However, this comes with a disadvantage, people are supposed to be protected from harmful hate speech in schools and businesses; actions are taken to protect this, though, other factors of freespeech are taken away when what is considered harmful and what is not can not be distinguished.
Freedom of speech is a big problem on school campuses...